


half goddess, half hell

by extasiswings



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Amnesia, Character Study, Honey Over Knives Queen, Introspection, POV Female Character, The Defenders (Marvel TV) Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-23
Updated: 2017-08-23
Packaged: 2018-12-19 02:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11888097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings
Summary: The woman in white calls her the Black Sky, tells her she is everything, treats her like a daughter and a weapon in turns.Who am I?The Black Sky.It doesn’t fit. It’s a title, not a name. It feels incomplete—when she rolls the words around her mouth, they ring hollow. They sit clumsily on her tongue no matter how long she spends looking in the mirror and repeating the phrase.I am the Black Sky.No.





	half goddess, half hell

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through the end of Defenders, episode 6.

Pain. That’s what she remembers.

That’s how she wakes—pain screaming in every muscle and bone, in her blood, in her very skin. She’s choking on a viscous liquid in the cold, in the dark, and it’s pure instinct that sends her hands slamming against the stone lid of the place that she refuses to let become her coffin.

_Who am I? Who? Who? Who?_

She reaches deep into the dark recesses of her mind, but there’s nothing. No memories. No answers. Only pain and the faintest whisper of an embrace that is long over. She can’t say whose arms left such a lasting impression. She can’t, in fact, say anything at all.

_Who am I? Who?_

The woman in white calls her the Black Sky, tells her she is everything, treats her like a daughter and a weapon in turns.

_Who am I?_

_The Black Sky._

It doesn’t fit. It’s a title, not a name. It feels incomplete—when she rolls the words around her mouth, they ring hollow. They sit clumsily on her tongue no matter how long she spends looking in the mirror and repeating the phrase.

_I am the Black Sky._

_No._

And then she meets the old man.

“Elektra,” he says, and she doesn’t falter, but inside her something surges, cries out, grasps for the thread. She thinks she hates him, this man, for reasons she can neither recall nor express. But the name echoes in her ears when the lights go out and she doesn’t give chase.

_Elektra…_

_Who is she? Who am I?_

_The Black Sky. Elektra?_

It doesn’t last. The name stays in the back of her mind, but that first bright spark of recognition fades back into the darkness.

Except...then she hears it again, from the man with the scarf over his face, and things begin to change. Then, she begins to remember.

It’s not much, not enough—the ghost of a kiss, of a hand clasped around hers, of _I let you in_ —and yet she hoards the flickers of memory like a miser.

She shouldn’t. She knows that. Alexandra says the past isn’t important, that she was weak then and is now strong.

She does it anyway.

He’s there again at the restaurant, but without the scarf, and his face, his eyes, his hair, his voice make her head spin with familiarity. When she fights him, her body remembers even if her mind does not—her muscles, her skin, they know this body, the violence it’s capable of, and the gentleness. She knows that he’s _someone_ to her, that he’s important, even before he asks, “What have they done to you?”

Her training tells her to fight, to maim, to kill.

Her heart tells her to stop.

“I held you in my arms—”

(He has his arms around her as he says it, his grip like iron, and although she struggles against being caged, in the back of her mind she knows, she _knows_ he’s telling the truth)

_Elektra. That’s your name. Elektra._

_Elektra._

She protects him without thinking about it, without caring that it’ll get back to Alexandra, that it might look bad. It’s an instinct—dark and possessive and potentially misguided—that whispers the only one allowed to touch him, to hurt him, is her. The fierceness of her conviction startles even her.

She runs.

_Who am I?_

_Elektra._

Elektra is the one who slips away from her minders. Elektra is the one who retraces a path she only half-recalls to an apartment she shouldn’t want to revisit.

_Hello, Matthew._

_You deserve better—_

_I felt hollow—_

_Do you still want me?_

_What if...wherever you run, I run with you?_

_I know what it’s like to be good—_

_You died in my arms—_

It’s not remembering, exactly. It’s not a spark bursting into flames or a flood overwhelming her senses. It’s as though someone has forgotten to turn off a tap all the way and the water trickling out might be enough to drink from if one cupped their hands under it for long enough.

It’s feelings. It’s flashes. It’s simply _knowing._ When she drags her fingers against the top of the couch she knows she’s sat there, slept there. When she curls up in his bed, she’s fitting herself into an impression, stepping into another skin, another self. But it feels right. It feels safe.

 _Sleep_ , her mind whispers. _Sleep, Elektra. Sleep._

She closes her eyes.

She dreams.

_Hello, Matthew._

* * *

Alexandra finds her in the cemetery. Of course she does. It wouldn’t do for her weapon to be out of reach for too long.

“The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen,” she says, and Elektra’s mind supplies, _Matthew_.

Except...he hadn’t let her die, had he? She can’t remember, but there’s a wrongness in the thought that sends her gut twisting into knots. She was dead though, that much she knows. She was dead and she’s afraid of dying again, of the darkness and the pain and the desperate loneliness. 

Alexandra promises she’ll never have to die again.

(Alexandra is a snake, but Elektra believes her when she says that)

She leaves. But she keeps the prayer card she stole from Matthew’s apartment tucked into her sleeve.

* * *

“Hello, Matthew,” Elektra says when he bursts through the door, hours later. She tastes the words on her tongue, their sweetness lingering like honey, and she regrets the fact that she’s going to have to fight her way past him to leave with the Iron Fist.

“It’s good to see you.”

She doesn’t have to kill the old man. She knows she could accomplish her mission without doing so. But there’s something inside of her that might be the Black Sky, but might also just be Elektra—something that spits and snarls and claws at the thought of leaving him alive. 

(He betrayed her—she knows that as inherently as she knows she loves Matthew. He used her and he abandoned her and he belittled her and in the end he betrayed her. So, no. She can’t let him live)

_It’s better this way._

Elektra drives the sword home. 

_This is not who you are._

_Perhaps not. But, right now, this is who I’m choosing to be._

* * *

_Who am I?_

_I am Elektra Natchios. And I will not be controlled._

That is what runs through her mind as she stands next to Alexandra, burning with fury. But Alexandra doesn’t realize her weapon is no longer hers, that the roles of spider and fly have reversed. 

“Kill Luke Cage. Kill Jessica Jones. And kill the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, whoever he is.”

_Mine. That’s who he is._

It’s the last order Alexandra will ever give.

“His name is Matthew,” Elektra hisses as she pulls her blade free.

_Who am I?_

_Elektra._

“And my name is Elektra Natchios. You work for me now.”

Elektra sweeps her critical gaze over the remaining elders of the Hand and finds them wanting.

“Any questions?”


End file.
